In common with many other works of wisdom from the first millennium or so
BCE, the
Tao Te Ching goes by the name of a sage, and that name is
Lao Tzu, which means (as has been mentioned) 'The Old Master' or 'The Elder Sage'. Whereas
Confucius/
Kung Fu Tzu is an historical personage,
Lao Tzu seems to be a kind of folk memory of the early days of
Taoism. The book bearing his name probably reached its current form some half-millennium after the death of Confucius. The reference in the WU above to
Chuang Tzu is deserved. Popular wisdom (as it were) has it that he was the immediate successor to Lao Tzu as leader of the Taoists as a philosophical school, but in fact he never refers directly to Lao Tzu in his own work.
It is said that Lao Tzu dictated the work when challenged by the
Keeper of the Pass, whose name is sometimes given as
Kuan Yin. This, unfortunately, looks identical (in English) to the name of the
bodhisattva Kuan Yin, otherwise known as
Kwannon, the
Japanese 'goddess' of mercy. It is, however, utterly different in
Chinese.